


Symbiosis

by atheartagentleman



Series: Out Come the Wolves [3]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Activism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Background Les Amis de l'ABC, Friendship, Friendship is Magic, Gen, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform, Paris (City), a hint of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 05:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheartagentleman/pseuds/atheartagentleman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘And thus did the horsemen of the apocalypse meet,’ Grantaire will later comment, only just masking the bitterness of his voice.</p>
<p>‘Musketeers, please,’ will be Courfeyrac’s haughty response.</p>
<p>----</p>
<p>The story of how Courfeyrac and Combeferre came to be the Wonder Twins, and how they adopted Enjolras, so that the three of them could change the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Symbiosis

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [crazynerdyfangirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/crazynerdyfangirl/pseuds/crazynerdyfangirl) for beta-ing, [ygrainette](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ygrainette) for looking at the first draft and not letting me get away with laziness, and to [human-ithink](http://human-ithink.tumblr.com) for being my sounding-board and support and for educating me about French coffee-drinking habits.
> 
> Any remaining mistakes are my own.

‘So I get that you’re our guiding light in our glorious quest to usher in a new age of peace and all, but dude, you have _got_ to stop fucking with our minds,’ Bahorel announces without preamble as he slides into the seat opposite Combeferre.

Combeferre blinks at him for a few moments, and, when no elaboration is forthcoming, he rearranges his features into an expression of polite inquiry, though his eyes are dancing with laughter.

‘You may need to be a little more specific,’ he prompts.

‘You and Courfeyrac and your little double-act. God, you’re doing it right now! That, right there! You have this poker face and you put that on while Courfeyrac chats complete shit and nobody knows whom to believe anymore. We end up second- and triple-guessing our own identities! And it’s not OK!’

Though Combeferre will be the first to admit that his poker face is truly masterful, there is no sign of it right now. He is grinning widely and somehow still managing to look aloof and faintly enigmatic (which is impressive considering that he is slightly short and slightly stocky and has a face that _should_ be as readable as a kids’ book. How someone who looks so affable manages to maintain this Man of Mystery thing is a matter of great personal pain to Bahorel.)

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

Bahorel makes a wounded sort of snarl-growl and fists his hands in his hair. ‘Yes. Yes you do! None of us can get a straight answer out of the two of you, _ever_ , and there is no way that’s the result of chance. No no, you coordinate this shit. I mean, none of us even know how you two met!’

‘What’s the consensus on that these days?’ Combeferre inquires mildly, interrupting what was rapidly snowballing into a full rant.

‘Something involving friends of mutual friends and possibly a sister. Only Courfeyrac just makes some smart-ass comment about kissing and telling, and you tell us to ask Courfeyrac.’

‘Hey, it’s not for me to tell.’

(The consensus is wrong. The story is actually a lot less racy than either of them let people think it is. True, there was a party involved, thrown by a mutual friend to celebrate a birthday – a fifteenth, to be precise. True, there was even a girl involved, because Courfeyrac was already the wiry kid who flirted as easily as breathing and got away with it because he was charming and ridiculous with an unfeigned joy most teenage boys would kill for. Except Combeferre walked across the room at precisely the wrong moment, a drunk guest crashed into him and was sent sprawling, hitting his head on the floor. Courfeyrac was then the one who ditched said girl to help Combeferre carry-walk the slightly stunned and still very drunk kid into an adjoining room. The sad thing is that the guy had had maybe two drinks. ‘Fifteen-year-olds,’ Courfeyrac groaned with a roll of his eyes, as though he weren’t one himself.

So really, they met over the head of some inebriated randomer, in a series of grunts and ‘no, this way’s. They were properly introduced afterwards, in the taxi that Courfeyrac called and insisted on paying for to get the poor kid home in one piece, because there was no way anyone was involving anybody’s parents when there was that much underage drinking going on. ‘You’re quite the white knight, aren’t you? Regular paladin.’ – ‘I try.’)

‘You know the consensus is also that this little charade the two of you play is why Bossuet is bald, right? He pulled all his hair out in frustration because of you. I hope you’re ashamed.’

‘Deeply and eternally.’ Combeferre’s voice is dry as kindling; Bossuet has had alopecia for years.

Bahorel snarls again. ‘Right, I am through with you.’ He jabs a finger at Combeferre and storms off, nearly knocking over his chair. Mere moments later, he returns to brace his hands on the table and tower menacingly over Combeferre. ‘You know what the worst thing is in all of this? It’s that I don’t even know whether you’re naturally this irritating, or whether I should be blaming Courfeyrac for everything.’

‘Oh by all means blame Courfeyrac if it lets you sleep at night. Wouldn’t want anything threatening that mane of yours.’ He reaches up to tug on a spring-like curl but Bahorel’s reflexes are too quick for him.

‘Hey man, don’t go mocking just because you haven’t been blessed with the Armenian awesome hair gene.’ He tosses his head in a gesture worthy of a L’Oreal spot and stalks away with all the dignity of a wet cat, leaving Combeferre to smile into his book.

He doesn’t really remember what he was like before Courfeyrac. BC. It can’t have been all-out miserable, he supposes, because he would remember _that_. _Lonely_ is probably more accurate, only that’s not quite it either; lonely in ways he wasn’t even aware of until Courfeyrac came along and drove them away. No, no, still not right. He wasn’t lonely. He was uprooted. Unsettled by his parents’ divorce, his father’s second marriage, the step-brother he acquired in the process and the half-sibling on the way. He had ideas about going forward – he’s always been a planner – but little notion of where he was. That’s what Courfeyrac gave him: certainty and an anchor. He’s a very different person now than he was BC, but not because Courfeyrac changed him. He just brings out and enhances Combeferre’s own latent tendencies, like a system of prisms and mirrors that purifies and brightens him.

When prompted, however, Courfeyrac will boast that bringing out Combeferre’s inner troll and allowing him to shine is his proudest achievement in life.

They take true delight in bamboozling friends and strangers alike, and have dedicated themselves to this craft with admirable zeal. Joly sometimes refers to them as the Wonder Twins, or simply as ‘the Tweedles’, which always prods at Enjolras’ carefully buried insecurities. The ‘brothers’ theme is fairly common in people’s assessment of them, but it’s not actually particularly accurate, because it’s so much more than just a smoothly choreographed comedy-and-conversation double-act. It’s borderline symbiotic. Not that this eases Enjolras’ mind at all... They’re at their best as a trio and he never doubts their affection for him, but he knows that if push came to shove, they could manage better without him than he ever could without them.

He came into their friendship late, in his first month in Paris, at a protest organised by some up-and-coming local politician – small-fry, but he wanted to be up-to-date, instead of wading blindly into the activist scene in a new city. She had been giving a speech and Enjolras, angry and alone, had been muttering about her right-wing everything-ist views and who did she think she was anyway. Next thing he knew, an arm had been slung around his shoulders and a dark-haired man was leaning against him with cheerful -- and looming -- familiarity. He was grinning like the Cheshire cat and his free hand was never still (the guy might have been attractive, but it was difficult to tell at such terrifyingly close range).

‘You know, most people seem to agree she’s fairly centre-left,’ he pointed out conversationally.

Enjolras was about to retort when a second man materialised at his other side and commented in much the same tone:

‘The again, most people –’

‘ – are idiots.’

‘ – don’t read between the lines,’ he carried on blithely as though the first man had not interrupted.

‘We like you,’ the first declared, his arm tightening around Enjolras and his hand administering a firm pat. ‘I’m Courfeyrac, and this distinguished gentleman is Combeferre.’

‘Enjolras.’

He shook their hands in turn, bewildered but entertained.

‘Right, let’s blow this popsicle stand and go rant about the state of the world over a drink.’

The one identified as Combeferre shot him an amusedly pointed look, to which Courfeyrac responded with a resigned huff.

‘Fine, coffee,’ he amended, with an eye-roll. Enjolras guessed Courfeyrac might have held up his hands in a ‘don’t shoot’ gesture had he not still been draped across Enjolras. Too caught up in their interactions to speak at all, let alone argue or resist, he allowed himself to be steered out of the crowd and down a side-street. Before long, Combeferre’s arm was slung around his waist and his own encircled the shoulders of his new friends.

(‘And thus did the horsemen of the apocalypse meet,’ Grantaire will later comment, only just masking the bitterness of his voice.

‘Musketeers, please,’ will be Courfeyrac’s haughty response.

‘Nah, definitely apocalypse.’

‘There were four horsemen,’ Combeferre will point out and instantly regret it when Grantaire launches into a detailed explanation of why Death doesn’t really count because he’s not inherently bad in the way that War, Famine and Pestilence are.)

When they met on that September afternoon, something magical happened and they fell into patterns of checking, balancing and enhancing one another like they were born for this purpose. Still, when Courfeyrac and Combeferre complete each other’s sentences like the most married of couples, Enjolras stutters and stalls because he’s the new kid, the intruder and _what if they forget him?_ He knows they won’t, but doesn’t fully _know_ it, and his shame at his own weakness, his doubt at the sincerity of the best people he has ever met, sometimes makes it hard to breathe.

If anyone was lonely before, it was Enjolras. As a child, he had friends – good friends, even – playmates and confidants. They filled the gap that yawned wide every time his father went away on business and took his childhood-sweetheart-turned-wife with him. He has no siblings. As a teenager, however, Enjolras set about burning each of the bridges between himself and his boarding-school peers with the kind of systematic precision that could only be unintentional. The more he read, the more out of kilter he became with the ethos of the school. His classmates might have lauded him had his misbehaviour extended only to pranks and cigarettes – true insubordination was beyond their world-view and so Enjolras came to disdain them.

He was at his most isolated just as Combeferre and Courfeyrac were finding each other.

*****

‘Sometimes it feels like I have to do everything myself,’ Courfeyrac wailed over coffee. The cafe he and Combeferre had frog-marched Enjolras to five minutes after meeting him was a lovely little place on the Rue Mouffetard called the Musain. They had now occupied a table in the corner for almost two hours as Courfeyrac poured one double-shot espresso lungo after another down his gullet and became increasingly melodramatic.

Combeferre nodded his agreement, while discreetly moving the sugar-bowl out of flailing range. ‘Be the change and all that...’

Then Enjolras asked something about Courfeyrac’s studies -- they’re both reading law (and Enjolras wonders to this day whether Courfeyrac will ever completely forgive him for being lucky enough to be at La Sorbonne because, unlike Enjolras, Courfeyrac actually gives a shit about his degree). The conversation moved on.

*****

Three days later, Combeferre and Courfeyrac received identical texts from Enjolras: ‘not yourself. _ourselves_ ’. There was nothing more for the rest of the day; the follow-up came through just as Courfeyrac was contemplating sending a string of question marks and possibly an adorably confused smiley-face.

sorry, was in a hurry. i meant re Courfeyrac’s comment the other day about having to change the world himself. together, we might be able to do something. meet this weekend?

They used Combeferre’s flat because his roommate was away, and slowly an idea began to take shape.

‘Enjolras, I’ve been looking at your list of mission statements. The big question is how do we want to do this? Do we want one, two at the most, big overall causes, which we work towards by addressing a series of individual issues that are directly linked to the the umbrella-mission, or do we want a set of several distinct causes, which would allow more diversity, but would also limit how big we can aim?’ Combeferre sat with a laptop poised -- he already had the penmanship that marks him out for the medical profession. He didn’t mention that he was unlikely ever to need to look at these notes again. Despite near-total recall, Combeferre was and still is a great believer in keeping meticulous records.

Enjolras rubbed the join between his neck and his shoulder as he pondered the question. ‘I’d go big. What do you think?’

‘Seconded. If we start with a load of smaller objectives, we’ll be stuck that way. If we think big from the start, it will take us longer to get going, but we’ll already be on the right track,’ Courfeyrac supplied and Enjolras nodded.

‘Exactly. So if you both are with me, I’d say we make the achievement of true social democracy our goal -- not this watered down version which politicians are trying to feed us and which panders to one group of the underprivileged by screwing over another.’

There was a moment of silence in which Courfeyrac gave Enjolras a long and assessing look. When he spoke again, his tone was equal parts amused, awed and disbelieving. ‘In short, we want to overthrow the government.’

‘I guess we do.’ Enjolras smiled almost bashfully, but there was a breathlessness to him that burned away any doubt as to the scale of his dream.

‘And I’m guessing that some of our actions will not meet with the whole-hearted approval of law enforcement,’ Courfeyrac continued slowly, in the same wondering-resigned tone whose edges crinkled with laughter.

Again, Enjolras looked both tentative and wildly hopeful. Courfeyrac had to hand it to him: there was something about him, something in the light with which he appeared bathed, in the thrum of his voice, that made Courfeyrac want to follow him. Combeferre twitched in unease. He too felt Enjolras’ magnetism, but was more than a little wary and wrong-footed by what Courfeyrac was suggesting Enjolras intended. Then again, Courfeyrac was rarely wrong about people, and Combeferre really wasn’t sure of how he felt about the possibility that he might be right on this one too.

‘So you intend to ruin my legal career before it ever has a chance to begin -- and Combeferre’s medical one too,’ Courfeyrac’s voice continued teasing, but there was a serious undercurrent to it and Combeferre was grateful for his friend’s perceptiveness.

Enjolras had the good grace to look a little guilty at that, but the near-vibrating excitement didn’t leave his limbs.

‘What kind of a France do you want to be a lawyer _in_ , Courfeyrac? Because from what I can tell, the legal system as it stands is carefully constructed to perpetrate -- and perpetuate -- oppression.’ Courfeyrac was about to interrupt to point out that he didn’t fancy his chances as a lawyer in this new world either if he had a criminal record, but Enjolras continued, his earnestness undimmed. ‘Having said that, I understand if you and Combeferre would rather not be on the front lines when -- _if_ \-- things get ugly. I would love it if you were, but it has to be what you want too. I can handle that side of things, since we’ve already established that I don’t value the legal career I’d be pouring down the drain.’ He smiled grimly, but there was nervousness in the way his eyes flicked from one to the other. He had only just found people with whom he felt he could be friends, and he was terrified that he might have pushed them away already. On the other hand, he had a sinking feeling that if they stayed but weren’t as convinced as he was, that might be even worse.

Luckily, Combeferre spoke up before Enjolras could follow that particular rabbit any further. ‘We’ll work something out so that we won’t have to scale down our ambitions. And if it comes to it… Well, success in bringing about genuine social democracy will probably save more lives than I could in forty years of medical practice.’

Courfeyrac could only nod at that, and Enjolras had looked at them with a sort of helpless gratitude that was difficult to look at for long.

‘Membership is our next concern,’ Combeferre pressed on, and the moment passed. ‘Unless we affiliate with an existing group and borrow their mailing lists, and I’d advise against this if we’re serious about this civil disobedience thing, we will have to rely on word of mouth. Especially if we want to stay off police radars and cover ourselves. Talk to people; we need to get the word out, but be cautious about how you do it, OK? We also want to move beyond our own schools, and hopefully beyond student life altogether. We won’t achieve anything if everyone shares our background.’ All three of them shifted a little uneasily at that, uncomfortably aware of how similar they were.

‘All well and good, Combeferre, but what are we going to tell our new recruits when they ask what our merry band is called?’

There was a long silence, then Enjolras slowly grinned, barely holding back a laugh. ‘The Friends of the Downtrodden,’ he declared.

‘Downtrodden? A little dramatic, but OK.’

‘Yep, except we’re going to spell it ‘ABC’, like the alphabet.’ Enjolras looked entirely too pleased with himself.

Combeferre hid his face in his hands and groaned -- he really hoped Enjolras’ jokes wouldn’t all be like this -- but Courfeyrac just threw his head back and laughed.

‘Yep. Les Amis de l’ABC. I like it.’

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this =)
> 
> Comments etc give me life and will probably reduce me to a gibbering, blushing heap. Come say hi on [Tumblr](http://at-heart-a-gentleman.tumblr.com) if that hasn't put you off.


End file.
